Posts tagged ‘improvisation’

The new video by AXIAL for Terra-a-Terra, a haunting collaboration from Paulo Chagas (Portugal), George Christian (Brazil) and Mehata Hiroshi (Japan). This is excerpted from a stunning thirty-one minute ambient/noise/improvisation piece that serves as one of two tracks on Love Without Wings, a new title on Spectropol that will be released alongside the newly revised, remixed and mastered version of Christian + Mehata’s La Géographie sans Regret on March 1. [More details on these releases in the coming weeks.]

This is the unedited outcome of the impromptu meeting of Tetuzi Akiyama on acoustic guitar and Johan Arrias on alto saxophone, on a Sunday morning in a minuscule Stockholm living room. Having toured and recorded together years before in a quartet format with the formidable Gul 3, the musicians knew each other well, but this was their first duo session.No preset parameters here. After a glass of black coffee and slightly diverging words on the structure ­- one long piece or shorter ones? ­- Johan shoves a plastic bottle down the bell of his alto, Tetuzi strokes a string, and they’re off. No distinct melodies or rhythms, yet the music flows with a gentle insistency and retains a strong sense of direction and purpose throughout, its beauty heightened by moments of dissonance. At times reminiscent of a koto-­shakuhachi dialogue, the core feeling is one of deep trust and respect. Every note, every sound counts. In the room, in the moment. Slow breathing, just as Tetuzi had suggested.

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Tetuzi Akiyama plays the guitar with primitive and practical implications, by adding a desire of own to the instrument’s characteristic nature in minimal and straight method. He delicately and sometime boldly controls the volume of the sound from micro to macro level, and tries to quantize his physical system.

Besides making variety of solo albums which covers from fingerpicking and slide acoustic guitar atonalism to noisy experimental drone to never ending boogie, he have made many albums in collaboration with highly praised artists such as Jozef Van Wissem, Donald McPherson, Greg Malcolm, Bruce Russell, Günter Müller, Jason Kahn, Michel Henritzi, Phantom Limb, Gul3, Tim Barnes, Oren Ambarchi, Martin Ng, Anla Courtis and Alan Licht, just to name a few. He is also a band member of Koboku Senjû, Satanic Abandoned Rock & Roll Society and Hontatedori.

Akiyama is a frequent guest at international music festivals in East & West Europe, North & South America, Australia and New Zealand in recent years.

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Johan Arrias is a saxophone and clarinet player active in the field of improvised, experimental and contemporary music. He works with deconstructing and fragmenting the traditional play on his instrument with extended techniques and preparation, regarding sound as an autonomous matter. This has led him to also start working with sound art. When composing music he moves freely from traditional to graphic notation and concepts.

Spectropol is pleased to announce the re-release of this excellent collaborative album. Stream, download, or purchase it at the link below.

Cornelius Dufallo:
“Patrick Derivaz and I started recording Bass Violin in January of 2011. Patrick’s concept was to experiment with pairing two instruments of extremely different registers using digital effects and loops. Our process was highly spontaneous: using composed material that we each brought to the sessions as a point of departure, we improvised freely and record all of our improvisations. After this we assembled each composition from the recorded material. Each of the pieces is a truly collaborative combination of composition, improvisation, and post-production.Our creative meeting ground turned out to be a meditative, quasi-hypnotic aesthetic in which variation is slowed to a nearly imperceptible rate. Within this sound world, the combination of registral extremes and a rich palette of digital tone colors created music that we hope is deeply engaging on both an emotional and psychological level.”

We are excited to present ‘Bass Violin’ for wider release on October 22. Originally produced in 2012, this project documents an intriguing electroacoustic collaboration between violinist/composer Dufallo (FLUX, ETHEL, Ne(x)tworks, VisionIntoArt) and bassist/composer/producer Derivaz (John Cale, Tom Verlaine, Joe Zawinul).

‘Bass Violin’ comprises seven hypnotic tracks, each a carefully crafted combination of improvisation, composition and post-production. The album will be available for streaming and purchase (digital and CD) on the Spectropol Bandcamp site.

There will also be a live CD release show at Spectrum in NYC on that day.

George Christian (Brazil) shares a beautiful and exploratory collection of guitar-based microtonal and processed pieces. Use the link to our Bandcamp site below to access the name-your-price download or limited edition CD-R.